Education questions

Education Questions. It said a lot about the priorities, the drift, the sheer bureaucratic nonsense of today's educational establishment.

By educational establishment one does not mean the teachers. One means the policy dictators, the strategy mappers, the Whitehall planners and their legion lackeys.

They are there in every local education authority, every organ of officialdom, every vulture of the greater state, from the standards clerks and the 'best practice' setters to the overpaid statement-of-the-obvious-makers of the health food lobby.

Education Questions is where their existences are meant to be justified. Education Questions - less about Education than the great mushroom of public sector interests that has glurped itself on to Education - is a moment in the spotlight. Nick Gibb, one of the Conservative party's more thoughtful backbench MPs, tried to raise a relatively unpartisan question about the teaching of arithmetic in primary schools. He very much doubted that enough was being done to teach multiplication tables.

Mr Gibb called for old-fashioned methods, even for rote learning. A few Labour MPs - not many of them had turned up - regarded him with suspicion.

Charles Clarke, Education Secretary, was troubled. Disappointed. Statesmanlike in the way he patronised the good Gibb.

The way Mr Clarke told it, there was barely a primary school in the land where the times tables were not being beaten into children's minds even as we breathe. Yes, a whole nation of Remove pupils is out there, reciting 'three threes are nine, four threes are twelve'. Mr Clarke was really quite insistent on that. And yet it would be interesting to know if any readers have different experience of what their five-year olds are being taught.

Anyone who is troubled that the local school is not giving youngsters a solid enough grounding should write to Mr Gibb and let him know, so that next time he has some stronger ammo.

Stephen Twigg, another minister, was next. Mr Twigg, who happens to be as camp as Hector's tent, is among other things minister in charge of a school food initiative. It concerns the greater appreciation of fruits. Yesterday he was asked about school catering. An uncommonly ineffective Tory frontbencher called Hendry complained, shrill and hysterical, that twice as much is spent on feeding prison inmates as is spent on feeding schoolchildren.

Well of course it is, you prize marrow. Point one: prisoners have to be fed supper and breakfast, whereas most schoolchildren only consume lunch (and even then leave most of it on the plate). Point two: prisoners, being adult, are bigger than children and need more grub.

Mr Hendry wanted an "expert steering group" for school food. Would an expert searing group, as in seared tomatoes or seared chicken breasts brushed with an olive oil and garlic dressing and cooked briskly under a dancing flame, not be more useful?

Having spoken for a great deal longer than was necessary, Mr Hendry told the Government it was time for "less talk, more action". The House jeered. It seemed to think that less talk from Mr Hendry might be a vote winner. Gisela Stuart (Lab, Edgbaston) wanted Mr Twigg to visit her constituency to come and watch "small children eating carrots and tomatoes".

Mr Twigg expressed himself delighted. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he lied. "And we have redefined carrots as a fruit." Have they? Why? Perhaps the only response is: Bananas. Damian Green (Con, Ashford), until recently shadow Education Secretary, complained about Labour's desire to scrap grammar schools. The Government front bench gave him a waffling non-answer.

Then the children's minister, Margaret Hodge, spoke of social skills and access to services. All just utter waffle. The great, late Lynda Lee-Potter had Ms Hodge spot on. She needs to be ejected from office, pronto.

By the end of the 40-minute session not a single improvement to state Education had been achieved. They had all just gone through the cliches and the motions. A Beta Minus affair.